p.t.t.red at Four Walls - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

The artist team known as pttr (for "paint the town red") is made up of Hans Winkler and Stefan Micheel, sum of two units Berlin-based conceptual provocateurs whose art throw outs are a form of intellectual sleight of hand. The duo for example, one time prompted a German newspaper to report that bears had get backed to a national park after the artists were spott prowling around the copses in bear suits.

More newly p.t.t.red joined with compatriots from the Brooklyn alternative space Four Walls to commemorate "Meeting Point: No-Man's-Land," a twopart work realized late last year near the Brenner Pass, a centuries-old alpine trade path across a historically disputed borderline between Italy and Austria. The centerpiece of that throw is an elaborate spiritual retreat created by the agency of p.t.t.red in an abandoned shepherd's cabin about a two-hour trek from the pass. The sum of two units artists equipped the cabin with a bed, heater and other creature comforts and, after soliciting suggestions from scientists, philosophers and writers around the world, created a library of volumes in a variety of languages from writers as diverse as Peter Handke, Franz Kafka, TC Boyle Lewis Mumford and Rudolf Bahro. Anyone can visit the cabin by means of signing out the key from a wellknown tavern in Brenner

In town, Micheel and Winkler organized an exhibition of work through artists from Italy, Austria, Germany and the U Twenty-six artists from Four Walls sent above pieces based on p.t.t.red's hilariously sneaky Statue of Liberty transformation in June 1995 (Dress in laughably fake park-ranger outfits, the sum of two units benign art guerrillas managed to place r filters above the statue's floodlights without being finded Later, as the automatic lights came upon the statue was transformed into a brilliant and unsanctioned scarlet monument)

At the Brooklyn incident Four Walls recreated its contribution to the Brenner Pass shoot forward through a group exhibition that evok the region's historic involvement in trade. Participants had exchanged their works for a variety of beneficials trading with visitors to the Brenner exhibition. The accrues of the exchanges (including a $100 bottle of Chateau Mouton Rothschild 1975 and, I can personally testify, several true good Cuban cigars) were place on display (or consumed) along with copies of the American works that had been traded. There were also films and videos showing the work of other invited artists installed at various sites around Brenner and in sum of two units railroad cars supplied by the government

In fact, the entire throw out evoked the theme of borders being ignored, dismissed or transcended. plane contemplated from a small space in Brooklyn the cabin throw out radiates a sense of transglobal invitation and serenity. It embodies a metaphorical and geographical respite from the emotional and political demands of prosaic nationalism, while providing an opportunity to contemplate an eclectic repository of the world's wisdom amid the isolated splendor of the Alps.

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